Mobile Command Unit sees more midways than mayhem

In a metal garage building on the grounds of the Worcester County Jail and House of Correction, a heavy-duty diesel truck packed with pricey high-tech gear, from infrared perimeter cameras to a satellite telecommunications system, sits waiting for mayhem.

The $514,000 Mobile Command Unit, bought six years ago in part with federal homeland security money, was billed at the time as a crucial law enforcement resource for the county that would enable coordinated local police responses to major incidents from natural disasters to terrorist attacks.

As it turns out, you're more likely to find the half-a-million-dollar MCU parked among the fried dough and cotton candy vendors at the Spencer Fair, where town police use it to coordinate security for the family event.

Sheriff's Department records show the MCU has been dispatched to a Boy Scout jamboree in Rutland, a church block party in Millbury, the Holden Days community festival and even the opening of the Wegmans grocery store in Northboro.

“Our local Rotary Club is hosting a car show on May 6th,” Westboro Police Chief Alan Gordon wrote in a February memo to Sheriff Lewis G. Evangelidis. “Could we possibly have the Special Response vehicle from your office on display?”

In the two-dozen times the truck has been dispatched from the jail over the last two years, it was sent to a hostage situation in Warren early last year and to a report of a mentally disturbed man with a knife in the woods of Uxbridge in February.

Other than those two relatively routine police situations and for training exercises, the MCU dispatch log reads like a listing of local suburban community events: Leominster Summer Stroll, Millbury Fire Field Day, American Heart Association Walk in Worcester, Grafton Night Out and Athol's 250th anniversary celebration.

“This just goes to show that wasteful spending has been going on for years and that state leaders need to realize that the spending habits of a decade ago cannot remain at the same levels,” said Paul D. Craney, executive director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, a government spending watchdog group.

“Sheriff Evangelidis seems to be properly maintaining the command unit in case it's needed for an emergency,” he added, “but our state leaders need to reduce their spending if we ever want to solve some of the larger fiscal problems in our state like transportation shortfalls.”

Chief Deputy Sheriff David Tuttle said displaying the truck at community fairs and other events gives the crew a chance to take it out on the road, fire up the radios and make sure everything is in good working order.

“Its purpose is for a disaster. Folks say, 'You never use it.' Well, thank God. And it does get used occasionally,” Mr. Tuttle said. “It's insurance. I hate to pay the premiums for my homeowner's insurance. But, if you need it, it's there.”

A similar command center vehicle operated by the state police and available to local law enforcement in the event of a major police response also is available for the asking. But a number of county sheriffs have decided over the years to get their own rolling command centers.

Worcester County's effort began two sheriff administrations ago, under former sheriff John M. Flynn, at a time when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had opened wide the spigots of federal grant money.

“The money was there, and law enforcement entities went about spending that money,” said Tom Shamshak, a former Spencer police chief.

Former Sheriff Flynn, now retired and living in Charlton, said he applied for the initial grant but was not involved in the eventual purchase of the vehicle, which was paid for by blending grant money from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.

“I don't know how it's being used now,” Mr. Flynn said. “The intention was it would be for everybody's town. Say the chief from Athol calls, we'd send it with a couple of men that knew how to use it and operate all the radios. It was to use if there was any terrorism or a lost child.”

When the completed MCU was delivered in April 2006, then-Sheriff Guy W. Glodis held a media event to show off the cutting-edge command center, touting it as “one of the most high-tech vehicles in the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

In a brief telephone interview last week, Mr. Glodis, now a lobbyist on Beacon Hill, minimized his role in getting the costly truck.

“It was applied for under Mike Flynn and delivered a month after I became sheriff,” Mr. Glodis said before abruptly ending the call.

Perhaps the MCU's most important capability is its ability to patch together, into one network, several radio systems operating on different parts of the radio spectrum. Disparate radio systems from several different police and fire departments, for example, could be combined to allow seamless communications in a disaster. The truck's inventory of radios and related equipment takes up an entire page of its specifications and carried a price tag of $91,317.

“This is a police station on wheels. We have phones, computers, fax, Internet, satellite. Basically everything you need to run a police station, we can do right out of here,” said Deputy Sheriff Eric Spafford, who has been on the MCU's crew for five years and is now its commander.

On a dark wall in the command center section of the truck, a nearly floor-to-ceiling array of radios, computers, keyboards, video playback devices, screens, phones and a tangle of network cables makes up the communications center.

“When kids come in here, the first thing they say is, 'ooh, ahh.' It kind of looks like a jet,” Mr. Spafford said.

A passionate advocate of the truck's telecommunications prowess and its importance to local police departments, the deputy sheriff ran through a briefing of all the high-tech gear, explaining how he can even tap into a video feed from a state police helicopter with a $21,685 microwave downlink package and then display the footage on the truck's $11,145 plasma television screen with smart board overlay.

“I don't think it's overkill at all. It may sound corny, but if it helps the response of one police officer to help one person, it's worth it,” the deputy sheriff said.

A spokesman for U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester, who helped secure the federal grants for the MCU, said the congressman continues to believe the vehicle is necessary and that the taxpayer money used to buy it was well-spent.

Mr. Shamshak, the former Spencer police chief, said it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

He said he could envision the truck coming in handy if there was a Columbine-style school shooting in the area, or a movie theater massacre as happened recently in Aurora, Colo.

Mr. Spafford posited the scenario of an inferno in a Worcester office tower. Or a conflagration of a different type.

“If there's a riot situation in Worcester, and who knows, it could happen, we could do all the booking right out of here,” he said.

In the meantime, the MCU will go into action again soon to serve as a temporary dispatch center for Blackstone Police while a pest control company fogs the station with insecticide.

And Jennifer Stanovich, executive director of the Holden Area Chamber of Commerce, said she'd be thrilled to have it back at the Holden Days festival next August.

“It's a wonderful attraction, and we've been lucky enough to have them attend for several years,” Ms. Stanovich said. “We look at it as a great addition to a community event. We love it.”